


Ask the stars your questions. They'll never answer, but they'll glow.

by two_drama_nerds_in_a_boat



Category: Lumberjanes
Genre: Gen, Introspection, Typical Lumberjanes Weirdness, file this under 'fics I wrote in quarantine', forgetting things, if you think this is beta'd you're wrong
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-08
Updated: 2020-04-08
Packaged: 2021-03-02 03:21:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,244
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23548318
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/two_drama_nerds_in_a_boat/pseuds/two_drama_nerds_in_a_boat
Summary: Jen's trying to understand how she got to camp, why everything is so strange here, and if she'll ever get back.
Relationships: Jen & The Roanokes
Comments: 3
Kudos: 12





	Ask the stars your questions. They'll never answer, but they'll glow.

**Author's Note:**

> i got thinking about how there's not enough jen on AO3, and then about how there's not enough discussion of just how WEIRD the lumberjanes world is, so i made this.

Jen doesn’t know how she got here. 

She wishes she did. Then at least everything would make a little more sense. 

Oh, who’s she kidding? _Nothing_ here makes sense. Nothing at all. It’s driving her crazy. 

She vaguely remembers looking at different job applications to be a counselor at various summer camps. Something that would look good on a future resume, or at least show she had _some_ experience. She remembers that space camp one really well, and a few different summer STEM academies. But she swears she never filled out this form. The one that brought her here.

It’s not that she’s too upset about it - she gets to work with so many amazing people, and she loves her girls, she does. She loves them more than she expected to, and so much more than any other people (outside of her family, that is) she’s ever met in her life. She admires how clever Jo is, and how strong April is, and Mal’s strategic talent and Molly’s brilliance and Ripley’s creativity, and she loves how they’re all just so, _so_ kind. And they’re amazing, all of them, all in their own little ways. 

Jen wouldn’t trade them for the world. 

She just wants to know _how_ she got here. 

And she truly just can’t say. 

She remembers seeing an advert for it. She remembers it, however vaguely. A flyer, maybe, or a pamphlet. But her memory’s fuzzy around the edges. It almost hurts to focus on one detail too much, to look too far back. She tells herself it’s just her getting older. Doesn’t your memory get worse as you get older? That’s what her mom always told her. But Jen’s barely even an adult, still a child if you’re counting brain development. 

(She should know. She took a class on adolescent brain development when she was in her junior year of high school. Very interesting class. She 100% recommends it.)

She wishes she could _talk_ to someone about this. About the monsters in the forest, and the danger around every corner. But she can't. She knows she can't.

  
  
Jen remembers driving. She… she drove to get here. How far? She can’t say. Did she even tell her family goodbye? She was living with them, she thinks. Maybe she was visiting home for the summer. It was her first year of college, wasn’t it? Was she just starting it, or just finishing it? 

She should know this. 

Why doesn’t she know this? 

She tries not to think about it.

She drove through the forest. She remembers… oh, she felt almost like she was falling asleep behind the wheel. It felt like she was under a trance. She remembers when they talked about something like this in Driver’s Ed a few years ago. Road hypnosis. It’s when you’re too tired from endless traveling, and the roads all look the same, and you kind of just… well, you almost black out, behind the wheel. 

But that’s only really supposed to happen on highways, and long, endless country roads. 

There was something different about this. 

She must have parked her car somewhere, but she can’t think of a location, right now. She drove a green Kia Soul. Her mother bought it for her, for her birthday last year. It’s a nice car. A smart car. 

She wonders where it is, now. It was a nice car. Ripley would like it, she thinks. Ripley likes bright colors and small, cute-ish things. She decides that, on the last day of camp, she’ll show her. If she can get her parents’ permission, that is. She wonders, briefly, when the last day of camp is. 

How long has she been here, again?

She remembers standing in a cabin. She knows now that it was Rosie’s cabin, but she didn’t know then. She was handed a uniform and a little rulebook, filled with the names of patches and how to earn them. And then she was sent away. 

There were other counselors there, too. They all seemed just as confused as her, but none of them ever talked about. They checked their clipboards, and they went to their assigned cabins, and they waited. For what? Well, none of them really knew. 

Campers, probably. 

Jen walked out of Rosie’s cabin, and she realized, for the first time, that it was night. She looked up at the sky - she loves stargazing. Always has, ever since she was a little kid. But she looked up at this sky, and it was… different. There was something off about it. Her favorite constellations were there, of course. She could see them. There was Aquila, and Cassiopia, and Cygnus. And all the planets were there, too. Mars, glowing a slight red, and Venus, bright as ever, and Uranus and Neptune fading off into the distance. And she spotted her favorite stars, from Sirius A and B to the Seven Sisters. They were all there. 

But there was something off about it all. 

Simply put, the sky was different. 

There were more stars in this sky than she’d ever seen in her entire life. 

Of course, she knew all about how light pollution messed up the night sky, making stargazing harder and harder. She knew that even where she lived on the edge of the city, the lights still messed up her view of the stars. She’s heard from classmates about how there are large expanses of untouched wilderness, where there are no people or cars or giant skyscrapers, where you can look up into the sky and it feels like you’re seeing forever. And, yeah, maybe this is one of those places. 

But that wouldn’t explain why Jen could see stars that _aren’t supposed to be there._

And why there are monsters in the woods, and dinosaurs in the toilets, and gods coming here for camp. And it doesn’t explain why there’s a woman who can turn into a bear, and portals into other worlds, and the thousands of other mysteries that seem to call this camp their home. 

Abigail was going to help her. Abigail promised her answers, more answers than Rosie, or the Bear Woman. But then Abigail turned out to be… oh, what was the word Rosie had used? It wasn’t evil… maybe an anti-hero? Something like that. And Abigail had wanted to kill the Grootslang… and then, Jen’s girls were there to save her, and Abigail was gone. And Jen still had no answers. 

She tries to enjoy the capture-the-flag games, and arts and crafts, and the hikes, and going swimming, and camping out under the stars. She really does. She wishes she could just chill out and enjoy it, the same way all of her girls somehow manage to. But she can’t. 

She remembers looking down at the cabin list on day one, and she couldn’t help but notice something. 

The first name that stuck out to her was ‘Zodiac’. And then ‘Dyatlov’. And then, for the first time since she’d entered the forest, something clicked. 

All of the cabins are named after unsolved mysteries. 

Every. Single. One. 

Roswell is the one about aliens. Woolpit is about kids who had green skin, or something like that. Dighton’s petroglyphs. 

And her girls? The Roanokes?

Well, they’re the lost colony. Looking for gold in the ground, trying to make a settlement in the new world. And then, one day, vanished. Without a trace. 

Jen tries not to think too hard about what that means.

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> i'm straight-up vibing rn.


End file.
